"Kineahora"
I was told there's a mystery god omnipresent with his eyes unblinking and he was watching everything we were doing we were thinking. Stadium lights on the corner. Cameras in a box so you don't know where they're pointing but you're pretty sure you're the star of someone else's reality show. I got flipped I see the sunset coming up. I took a trip I wished on a shooting star it was a satellite. We see see everything. We CC everything. Panopticon.
"Spoons"
Big spoon little spoon three spoons no spoons dreaming till I go boom! Sorry there's no room. Hairy neck choke it bite it stroke it you're rubbing me raw and you don't even know it. My heart's broken, forget it for a moment, your nails are in my chest just like you fucking own it. But we're fading fast and our words are getting slow, before we finna crash there's one thing I gotta know are you a big spoon or a little spoon? Top spoon or bottom spoon I got it on switch. My ass be swooning for a nettle-stung witch. Besos or scratchos it don't matter which. You can beat my ass red like I'm a fucking snitch. Ain't nothing wrong with a little bit of pain. Ain't nothing wrong with the way that we're playing. Talking consent like you know what I'm saying? Only way to get into my body heart and my brain. I'm loving the way that you're talking to me, insomniac hummingbird poetry. You got me feeling safe and hot and free got me trauma healing through that freakery.
"Home"
Get my name right Mordechai Yehezkal Aryeh Gonif ben Aharon Moshe v'Yehudit Gunnery. Some fools who think they know call me Mark O'Sluttery but this a dry spell like an Arizona nunnery. I don't need this industry Riot Folk and Fools I be Odonian Ryan and me living down in Pen Lucy. Used to kick it in Berkeley but now I'm back Bmore MD and lately its been showing me just why they call it Charm City. I used to live in the land of the Ham, you know that city with too many white men? mountains mushrooms music Whaam Que Viva Hoot Hoot Femme Uke God damn! But now I'm back in the land of the O where they drive fast and we jaywalk slow greatest city in America the benches say so. Why would benches lie? I don't know. I'm kind of a big deal but don't flaunt it, don't worry about the beat cuz I'm on it, mix some punk cumbias electro hip hop in the tonic, you say I stole my sound but that's just cuz you bought it. My music is real I don't take it casual, my lyrics need footnotes they're so intertextual. I learned my kike skills in Pikesville, I'm a polysexual radical Jewish intellectual. I'm trying to innovate, I ain't saying folk is dead but I'ma play it on the drum machine instead. I wanna see some revolutionaries bobbing heads freedom fighter dance music get you breaking a sweat. Let the beat rock your feet heart chest and bones and let the music flow through you from your soles to your dome and shake your ass at the party or on your own. Damn it feels good to be back home.
"Rock Star"
I try to be nice to everybody but sometimes I find it necessary to spit a little bit of commentary on these corny ass phony rock stars who write cheap ass poetry then don't give it away for free claiming deep ecology then drive around in cars. My folks raised a mensch and I ain't mentioning no names so this is for politicos hungry for that fame like you. I'm real you are pseudo style's phat like a sumo blowing up like Benizair Bhutto you're immature like you're Menudo. I'm like Ani Difranco cuz I'm trying to evolve, you're like Yanni or Heino, safe boring and all. I spit wisdom for the yins, elders and my peers, cuz my mouth's a conduit from my soul to your ears. I do it for my people freaks Jews lefties and queers, you just do it for the kids, your ego and career, but not me. Cuz when I sit down to write or I stay up half the night for a recording session that ain't my profession, I ain't trying to get paid off the tracks that I laid. I workâyou need a fresh coat of paint? No, I do it cuz I want to, I do it cuz I got to, I do it cuz I come undone if I ain't speaking my truth. I'm making my place in the oral tradition throwing something in the stream where I've been fishing for texts, love, and inspiration, I ain't got no time for oversimplification. Cuz I'm a poet, you're a schemer with loads of ambition riding on a high donkey like a man on a mission. I said I'm really real but you fight windmills. You shop for a record deal I got these bases to steal. Your sweet rhymes stink like laundry detergent, I cut my rhymes out this culture, sew it up like a surgeon cuz I'm bound to change reality before I go, your ass'll change shit maintain the status quo. I treat this music right and I'm raising the bar cuz I'm DIY for life and you're like a rock star.
"The Wall"
I came of age at the end of history fed post-cold war freedom poetry. Identity's the crisis I've been cut into pieces sewing myself back up and I don't know where to begin. I've been trying to show you over and over I'm a replicant and I don't belong here. Hunted by my hauntings insomniatic ramblings tail made of wood and heart made of kindling. Circle game for the functioning insane build a carousel for your thoughts around your brain. Try to ease your head do whatever it takes. I'm that stoned carney with my hands on the brakes. Know what I know and I shout it at ya'll there's a wall but the wall gonna fall. Damn right this night gone too damn far. Scientists communicating with the stars. Two million people locked up behind their bars and they're always getting more money for more wars. Always locking up people just for going to work. Indefinite detention like they're gonna deport everyone they call illegal but they know that ain't right. This'll be a hot summer and we're gonna melt ICE. Fuck a wall down south fuck a wall out east in Palestine they say they do it for peace but I know that's pomo colonial double speak. That shit's an act of war but no one asked me, huh? Know what I know and I shout it at ya'll there's a wall but the wall gonna fall. Fragmentation civilization no escape from society. The freaks are in the woods you can't discharge in the city. Stand back she's got a gat waiting for shit to collapse. I'm in the basement mixing medicine for panic attacks. My heart'll swallow yours in a second if you let it, write it in your skin so you never forget it. You got nothing but that's something so go ahead and bet it and I know what I want I don't know how to get it. I want the nerves, want the muscle, want electricity. I want the motion of pink light on the rippling sea. I want to stop clinging to how it used to be. I want to knock down this wall between you and me. Know what I know and I shout it at ya'll there's a wall but the wall gonna fall.
"Jew Town"
Represent that Jew Town. Bmore Pikesville Upper Park Heights. Brooklyn hasids hipsters kikes. Aifo ha hoodios b'ha Puget Sound? The Bay be hella gay, hands up thumbs down. Caracas shout it in Ladino, rep the Levant but the settlements? Feh, no. Forget their lies about their facts on the ground. Fuck a Gush in the tush. Ya'll going down. Rad elders up hilltop youth down. Time to put your Tanakhs down. Riot if Bibi comes to town. Montreal, yaâll rule, hands down. Occupied Palestinian Territories ya'll pull out hafrada be apartheid now hasbara be bullshit wow. We don't hear it anyhow. I don't care how we get it now but we got to get it somehow. Fuck your thumbs, we got bigger things now. Got to tear their wall down. Two state one state no state what stake do you take in your elders' mistakes? Take your heads up out the ground. Humsas up now get down. Represent that Jew Town. Mizrahim ya'll do what ya'll do. Sephardi hamouds call me voos voos. Remember Jesse called Jew York Hymie Town? Represent it, fress me, hands up, thumbs down. LA NJ Philly DC Toronto Vancouver BC Chicago Buenos Aries London Mexico City. Anarchists Against The Wall, I loooooove the way you do it, ya'll. Shministim I mean God damn! I be repping the International Jewish Anti-Zionist Network. Not a Democrat or Republican, ain't selling out to be a good American. Red and black flags like back in the day except for now they're here to stay. This is for you little birds. Flip it, feygeleh, check the word. The status quo is absurd. The futureâs ours, hey, ain't you heard? Radical secular feminist tikun olam anti-Zionist. What up queers gender rebels and trans? I said put your thumbs down but throw up your hands! Represent that Jew Town.
"Dreamers"
To Jenny. A wall that's made of virgin paper has got too much room to stand. I saw a rainbow on solstice and phosphorescence in the sand. And all that paper in your eyes I wonder what you seen? The wall is made of lies but it's holding you in. I'm singing for ya'll prisoners. I'm singing for Brianna Waters, Eric McDavid, and Marie Mason. As sure as I know the sun rise I know ya'll gonna be free. How many dreamers in their cages?
"Puget Sound"
Private hells and secret spells I launched a dirty sigil under a new moon I hope that soon the results will be residual. I take a walk on the strand after the sky's gone hazy and watch my thoughts turn into sand and forgive myself my crazies. Puget Sound are you down? We've got some things to talk on. I lay my bones on the stones at the coast that you've been hard on. A seagull's dead on a bed of feathers bugs and bare bones. Is that all the bay has got to stay before the tide takes me back home? Oh salty one, why should I run like your waves do detest me? If the sound wants me to drown then that just is my destiny to be with Sedna of the sea and brush her mossy dark hair and wait until the winter frees the secrets she whispers in my ear. The eagle eats what it seeks the heron egg at sundown. A mountain peaks, a baby shrieks and the world goes around. I wasn't birthed for this earth of jerks and work and slaughter so set me free at the beach I belong to the water.
All songs written, performed and produced by Aryeh Gonif, aka Mark Gunnery, except "Behave" is a cover of God Is My Co-Pilot's rewrite of the Chumbuwumba song, and "Kathy's Song" was written and performed by Kathy Acker from beyond the grave. Mahra Parian sings on "Panopticon" and "Puget Sound". Greg, Ryan, and D Dizza do a little something something on "Home". Then, again on "Rock Star" but with some help from Holler Girl. Femme Uke, aka Ashley Thomas and Laine Kensington, sing on âBehaveâ. Ryan Harvey screams on "Dreamers". Joe Overton plays fiddle on "Puget Sound". Cover art by Drew Miller. Recorded January 2009-January 2010 in Bellingham, WA and Baltimore, MD. Yeah. I know. A whole year. Wow.
"Spoons" has a sample from a performance by Artis the Spoonman and the Velvet Underground song "The Gift".
"Home" has a flow inspired by "Land of the O" by Bossman.
"Kathy's Song" has samples from Kathy Acker's spoken word album "Pussy" and her collaboration with the Mekons, "Pussy King Of The Pirates". Kathy Acker was the best writer of the 20th century, hands down, everyone agrees, so read her, now, over and over again until she just seeps into your being.
"Dreamers" has a sample of the late, great Infernal Noise Brigade performing "Ja Helo" at the Maple Lane Prison, which was recorded by Inphaseprod.
Big deep heartfelt love and thanks to Greg, Ryan, Rebecca, Brenna, Adhamh, Leah, Dendron, Ira, Ben, Mordi, Lilu, Mahra, Mom, Dad, and Joe.
What up to my musical comrades--Riot Folk, Here's To The Long Haul, Jubilee, Femme Uke, Nick Duncan, Slow Teeth, Tansy and Tarweed, Chelsey Weber-Smith, Son of Nun, Annah Anti-Palindrome, Tin Tree Factory, Que Viva Collective, Hoot Hoot.
Respect to all my influences whose fingerprints are all over this album, including Kathy Acker, God Is My Co-Pilot, Blaqstarr, Rye Rye, MIA, Julie Ruin, Crass, the Raincoats, the Slits, Leonard Cohen, Infernal Noise Brigade, the Soulquarians, Joni Mitchell, dead prez, Public Image Ltd., Chris Kraus, a Tribe Called Quest, Artis the Spoonman, Velvet Underground.
Anti-copyright 2010. Riot Folk Collective. Odonian Records.
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